1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to an independent distributed metadata system and method. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a system and method of metadata in which metadata may be distributed independently of the data to which it is associated and computing environments, data structures, and the like, may be created from this metadata.
2. Description of Related Art
In distributed data processing systems, multiple local copies of the same data element are often stored in different physical locations. For example, if a first computing device located in Chicago, Ill. has a particular set of data and a second computing device in Los Angeles, Calif. wishes to make use of this set of data, the second computing device must have its own local copy of the data which it can then operate on.
There are several drawbacks to keeping multiple copies of data. One drawback is increased resource consumption. These resources include transmission bandwidth, physical memory, and the like. That is, data must be transferred from the original location, thus incurring transmission expense. Once the data arrives at the new location, memory must be allocated for it.
Another problem with the current system of maintaining multiple local copies of data is that it becomes difficult to manage the multiple existing copies. For example, the various copies of the data must be maintained such that they are consistent with one another. As a result, whenever any data in any of the copies of the data is changed, the changes must be reported to every other computing device having a copy of that data. This leads to a variety of technical difficulties that must be handled. Furthermore, it creates a large amount of processing overhead to simply manage the various copies of the data.
As a result, it would be beneficial to have a system and method for allowing distributed access to data without requiring multiple copies of the data. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to have a system and method in which management of changes to data is simplified.